Children, adolescents and adults can take charge and change their future health by using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to address traumatic experiences. Research repeatedly shows that children who experience unresolved trauma and adversity are likely to become adults with compromised physical and emotional health. Conventional medicine appears unprepared to supply solutions to prevent childhood trauma from translating into adult illness.

EFT is a do-it-yourself acupressure technique that anybody can use to halt depression, anxiety, anger and fear. It involves fingertip tapping on select acupressure points while focusing on the problem in question. This adaptation of acupressure claims an 80% success rate in calming the body and mind’s response to trauma. It and can be learned freely by downloading the EFT Manual at emofree.com.au

Vincent J Felitti, MD, co-authored the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study that compared 17,400 adults’ health status with decades-old childhood experiences. According to Dr. Felitti, “The ACE Study reveals a powerful relation between our emotional experiences as children and our adult emotional health, physical health, and major causes of mortality in the United States.”

The ACE Study findings categorized adverse childhood experiences (physical, emotional or sexual abuse, dysfunctional households with family issues like violence, alcoholism, mental illness and depression). A person who had four of these adverse childhood experiences (ACE score of 4) was 390 percent more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than someone reporting no adverse childhood experiences. A person with and ACE score of more than 4 was 460 percent more likely to be a depressed adult than someone with an ACE score of zero.

Gary Craig, founder of EFT explains, “The ACE Study and similar research is finally coming to the conclusion that unresolved childhood emotional issues affect adult health. However, practitioners of EFT have known this since 1995. Furthermore, EFT practitioners all over the world have been erasing traumas associated with adverse childhood experiences for more than a decade.”

Although most conventional physicians have yet to learn about EFT, this simple technique fills a void that cannot be filled by prescription medications or traditional psychotherapy. According to the theory behind EFT, childhood trauma causes a severe disruption in the body’s energy meridian system (also known as Chi or Qi), and unless this disruption is corrected, physical and emotional symptoms and coping behaviours are likely to erupt as the traumatized child ages. EFT corrects that energy disruption and its accompanying physical and emotional symptoms.

Says Dr Fellitti, “Clearly, we have shown that adverse childhood experiences are both common and destructive. This combination makes them one of the most important, if not the most important, determinants of the health and well-being of the nation. Unfortunately, these problems are both painful to recognize and difficult to cope with. Most physicians would far rather deal with traditional organic disease.”

Dr. Felitti indicates that the treatment and prevention implications of the ACE Study are daunting to conventional doctors. “Why would one want to leave the relative comfort of traditional organic disease and enter this area of threatening uncertainty that none of us has been trained to deal with?”

Thousands of EFT Practitioners worldwide are currently working with children and adults, teaching them EFT and helping them to resolve complex emotional traumas. In addition to laypersons, medical professionals of all kinds are incorporating EFT into their practices.